Chapter 1 Hao Ren's Reunion with an Old Foe

It had been a long time since Hao Ren had seen this kind of monster with a story in the Dream Plane – the last time he had encountered one was when he was dealing with the siren problem in Nasaton. At that time, a mind flayer had occupied the deep-sea city and mentally swapped with the Siren Queen. Hao Ren and his group spent a lot of effort to capture the monster alive, but in the end, the monster escaped the tight surveillance on the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace by uploading its consciousness. Hao Ren regretted this for quite a while.

After that, he never saw such a terrible creature mutated from the brains of the Guardian Giants again. Whether on the abandoned planets in the Dream Plane or in the vast space, these monsters seemed to disappear out of thin air.

He didn't expect to see them again here, on the planet of Amantir ruled by the claws of the Mad Lord – or rather, to see one of them.

Vivian's pre-set Shadow Canopy was a wise move. Under the powerful magical cover, the mind flayer in the room did not notice the unusual aura above for the time being. It was just lying on the circular metal platform like a mollusk, connecting its tentacles (actually nerve cords) to the holes around the platform, and issuing instructions to the various devices in the room while making muffled, mud-like groaning sounds.

If they didn't know the origin of these monsters in advance, probably no one would associate this terrifying mass of flesh with the race of the Guardian Giants.

"It hasn't noticed us," Nangong Sanba quickly retreated after peeking, "The sound this thing makes is really disgusting... Don't tell me this is a popular new song in the Corrupt Legion."

"Mind flayers are one of the highly intelligent Mad Lord creatures," Vivian frowned. "Could these mind flayers be the commanders behind those monsters?"

"You mean this planet is actually the mind flayers' lair?" Lily blinked. "That's not necessarily true. We've only seen one so far. Maybe it's just that there happens to be a mind flayer among the corrupted monsters here..."

"No, it shouldn't be the only one," Hao Ren noticed the details in the room and retorted, "Did you notice those devices? And that platform—those devices all have biochemical interfaces that can be directly connected to the mind flayer's nerve cords, and there are no other control panels besides those interfaces. This shows that these devices are specially prepared for the mind flayer, and there are no other operators. If that mind flayer is just an insignificant individual in the Corrupt Legion, there's no need to prepare such a large number of special devices for it, and there's no way for others to use them."

"It can't be ruled out that the stuff below is the mind flayer's 'exclusive equipment'," Nangong Wuyue said in a low voice. "What if it's the boss here?"

Hao Ren thought for a while and had to admit that this was also possible. "That's also possible... It depends on whether we can find more mind flayers later."

Lily bared her teeth at the floor. "What about the one below? Should we kill it?"

Hao Ren carefully considered it and shook his head. "Don't make unnecessary trouble – don't forget the various special abilities of the mind flayers in the spiritual realm. It may be able to directly warn the outside world through thought waves. If we don't kill it in the first place, it will be a big trouble. There's no way to capture or force a confession from this thing, so it's not worth the effort."

The others also agreed with this view, so Lily could only let out a slightly disappointed "oh" and obediently followed behind Hao Ren, continuing to move deeper into this underground facility with the team.

Thirty minutes later, they successfully passed through the outer area of the Great Temple and officially entered the underground area of the temple district.

Getting here was considered entering the building where the control center was located, but the entire control center of the Planetary Fortress was a rather large facility – it included a huge ground temple like a Tower of Babel and an underground structure that could be called an underground city. Its underground part was even larger than the part above ground. Back in Nakdal, Hao Ren and his group had a fairy leading the way, directly reaching the machine room along a straight line through the upper and lower passages, which was naturally convenient and quick, but here, they had to follow the intricate pipeline system in the underground facility to go around the entire facility, greatly reducing their speed of action.

"Salaman sent a message that the sporadic firefights in space have also ended. Now the Guardian Legion and the drone legion have retreated to their designated positions, facing the Amantir defense circle from afar," Hao Ren said in a low voice. "In the following time, some of Amantir's defenders will retreat into the planetary atmosphere, and the defense force outside will be strengthened. We must be extra careful in our actions."

Nangong Sanba looked at the dimly lit passage ahead. The monotonous and depressing environment here made people very uncomfortable and greatly consumed everyone's patience. Even he was a little impatient. "Where are we now?"

The data terminal projected a holographic map showing the route provided by Salaman. In the center of the map was a light blue beam representing the Amantir Crystal, and everyone was now above the side of that light blue beam, surrounded by intricate obstacles: "The straight-line distance from the Amantir Crystal is two kilometers—but considering these endless pipes and corridors, the distance we actually have to travel is more than ten times that distance."

Infiltrating through the pipeline system of course couldn't be a straight line. In fact, Hao Ren and his group's route was almost half a circle around the entire underground area – they entered from the south of the Great Temple, and then turned half a circle underground along a roughly spiraling downward arc. There was even a section of the route close to the equatorial Great Rift Valley. Finally, they would enter the machine room storing the crystal from the northern entrance under the temple. This route was theoretically the safest one.

Nangong Sanba sighed. "Alas... we can only keep going..."

After continuing along the route map for a while, Lily stopped a little confused. "Do you feel... it seems a bit hot here?"

It wasn't just her who felt it, in fact, Hao Ren had also noticed this: the surrounding temperature seemed to be rising.

"We are on the edge of that Great Rift Valley," Hao Ren glanced at the route map. A striking red crack on the route map "cut off" nearly a third of the original complete underground facility, "It should be the heat from the Great Rift Valley that has been transmitted in."

The facts quickly proved Hao Ren's deduction.

After continuing for not long, the restless heat in the surrounding air had turned into an obvious heat wave, and there were obvious traces of post-repair on the passing pipes. In some parts not marked on the route map, there were even unexpected forks and gates: these things were the result of re-construction.

Obviously, after the equatorial region of Amantir was torn apart, the Corruptor garrison on this planet carried out a complete repair and reconstruction of this area. After arriving here, the route map provided by Salaman could no longer be used.

"The underground facility is obviously not completely sealed, otherwise the heat wave would not have come in," Izhaks sniffed, with a look of disgust on his face, "The air quality is far worse than in my hometown. The smell of sulfur is not pure at all."

Hao Ren gave him a contemptuous look. "Don't mention the air quality. The air quality in your hometown would give ordinary people lung cancer in three breaths."

As they spoke, they happened to reach a fork in the road. This fork was not marked on the route map at all, and continuing to move forward was entirely based on personal judgment. Lily raised her tail and shook it in the air, looking at the direction in which the fluff on the tip of her tail was floating: "The air is blowing from that direction—should we go take a look?"

What the husky girl pointed to was also the general direction of the original route, so Hao Ren nodded in agreement.

Following the direction of the hot air flow, they found that they were gradually leaving the ventilation duct system.

The road ahead became wider and wider, and there were several gates that looked abandoned. The lighting system on both sides was also turned off. All signs indicated that this was an ancient passage that had been activated but had now been abandoned.

The view in front of Hao Ren's eyes widened.

"...This place..." Nangong Wuyue hugged his arms, and the tip of his tail was nervously poking on the ground, "I feel like I'm starting to evaporate!"

After coming out of the last gate, the open space outside was directly connected to the equatorial Great Rift Valley!

A dazzling red light filled the field of vision. After the eyes adapted to this light, the scene outside gradually became clear. Hao Ren found that the outside of the gate was connected to a wide metal platform, and the metal platform itself was directly built on the broken rock layer. Under the platform, red light was constantly surging. It was hot magma constantly tumbling under the impetus of unimaginable huge chaotic power. On both sides of the platform, exposed mechanical structures and pipelines, platforms, beams, and gates could be seen everywhere on the red-hot rock walls. These facilities almost extended along the cliff to the magma below!

"Pay attention to concealment!" Nangong Sanba suddenly called out in a low voice, and almost at the same time, Vivian's Shadow Canopy once again shrouded everyone.

With the protection of the Shadow Canopy, everyone hid in a depression on the edge of the platform, and a group of hideous and twisted flesh monsters flew over the platform in the next second.

Those flesh monsters didn't seem to be a dedicated patrol team, but rather soldiers who had just been "manufactured" from the rift valley. They flew into the sky while making chaotic roars, completely unaware that a few small intruders were hiding under their noses.

Hao Ren's sight turned to the distance. In this vast rift valley, more monsters were constantly being manufactured from the surging magma rift: although it was much less than the overwhelming monster tide that had poured out of the rift during the previous battle, it was still a palpitating phenomenon.

Lily couldn't help sticking out her tongue: "It can't be... Do they directly use magma to 'manufacture' soldiers?"

Vivian waved her hand, and a small bat flew out of the nearby shadows and turned into blood mist to return to her body. She shook her head: "No... the monsters didn't come out of the magma. I used the little bat to investigate, and there are similar 'summoning grounds'... facilities below."

Hao Ren frowned: "Summoning grounds?"

Vivian didn't explain, but instead drew a few runes on the ground, so the scene seen by the little bat before appeared in the sky above the runes: although it was far from as clear as a holographic projection, it was still enough to distinguish.

Everyone saw that at the bottom of the rift valley, near the source of the magma surge, countless huge black platforms were neatly distributed along the cliff. The black platforms were painted with complex symbols and patterns in dark red stripes. The chaos presented by those patterns even made Hao Ren feel dizzy for a while. Every once in a while, the patterns on the black platform would brighten up, and then a distorted monster would slowly take shape in the air and fly into the sky...

"...Damn it..." Seeing this scene, Hao Ren couldn't help but swear, "Is there any justice to mass-producing troops like this?"

Lily glanced at him: "A guy who spent four years building 80 billion drones has the nerve to say that someone else's mass-production of troops is unjustifiable?"

Hao Ren: "..."

"These are not the most important things, the most important thing is what follows," Vivian interrupted Hao Ren and Lily's conversation, signaling that there was a follow-up to this video, "You see, these platforms are actually connected..."

Sure enough, as the little bat's perspective rose, everyone saw that those black platforms were not isolated from each other. They all extended a black, pipe-like thing, and those pipes all converged in the center of the magma river at the bottom of the rift valley. There was a huge black metal tower, on the surface of the metal tower were several protruding hemispherical structures, and each hemispherical structure was now lying on a monster.

Those were mind flayers, more mind flayers.

Amantir was indeed a nest of mind flayers!